


Memories in Ink

by firearms57



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Jasnah's childhood, ivory and jasnah meeting, jasnah's illness, kholinar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firearms57/pseuds/firearms57
Summary: Jasnah is uneasy in the dark. Where did her fear come from?- A look into Jasnah's past and her first meetings with Ivory. -





	Memories in Ink

**Author's Note:**

> i found an outline for this from two years ago. so i wrote it.

Among the thousand windswept trees of Kholinar’s broad courtyard, the royal palace lies, looming presence throwing a massive shadow across the otherwise quiet gardens. 

The Queen of Alethkar paced up and down the long marble floors of the throne room, stone too perfect to be soulcast. Only moments ago, a band of ardents had been in the room with her, seeking to speak on a sensitive matter, one that had been troubling them and the Alethi people for some time. They were no longer here, obviously. Navani wouldn’t have it. 

“Storming ardents,” she muttered. “Always poking their noses where they don’t belong. Giving advice when it’s not wanted.”

From his throne, Gavilar watcher her. It was rare that she should get so worked up, and in such an obvious manner no less. She had all but shoved those ardents out the door. 

“Dear,” he began, always cautious around Navani’s temper. “Perhaps you’d like to talk about it?”

“ _Talk_ ?” She halted, heeled shoes clacking against marble in a sudden double beat. “I’d like to _yell_ , thank you.” 

“Ah, I do think that would be a bit...excessive.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I don’t much care what you think,” Navani said primly. The angry flush on her cheeks had deepened her eyes to fuschia and edged her voice with steel, and Gavilar was finding it hard to take her seriously. He had always found her lovely in the pique of temper, not that he’d ever tell her that. He’d like his limbs to remain attached to his body, thank you.

“Did you hear how they talked about her, Gavilar?” Navani whirled to continue her pacing, her anger needing an outlet. “They called her ‘damaged,’ like a chull born with no legs. Completely overlooking her genius. The things she’s done, and at such an age, no less!” 

“Yes, but —”

“How dare they.” Her voice hushed to a deadly whisper, then crested to a shout in the churn of an angry tide. “How _dare_ they!” 

Her fist struck the wall with a solid thump. Gavilar winced. Flesh was not supposed to make that noise. Navani seemed not to notice, head bowed and face turned inward. In anger or despair, he could not tell. 

“Navani,” he tried again. “You understand they were only trying to help. They worry for her as much as anyone. They just have an…” He twisted his hand in the air, conveying the feeling that sat in his uneasy smile. “They have an odd way of communicating it.” 

“She is getting better, isn’t she?” 

For a moment, Gavilar scrambled to collect his thoughts. He had been expecting disagreement or a new bout of ranting, but certainly not brevity. Despite the years they’d been married, he had never gotten used to Navani’s labyrinthine conversation style. 

“Ah, yes.” Gavilar scratched his scalp, then waved a hand in the air. “That’s what the doctors say. She’s stopped with the delusions, hasn’t she?”

Navani’s lips twisted in a mocking smile. “That’s what the doctors say.” 

Gavilar didn’t know what to say to that.

There was an uncomfortable beat of silence before Navani sighed and pushed off from the wall. She shook herself and Gavilar watched her collect the fractured pieces of her decorum. A hand through the hair and a pinch to the cheeks did wonders for the complexion. 

“Well,” she said and set off down the floor at a brisk pace, “that’s enough of listening to me rave like a woman gone mad. I wouldn’t want to waste any more of your time.”

Without another word uttered, she breezed past him, heels clacking. Gavilar watched the retreating form of her back, feeling like he was five minutes behind in their exchange. “Where are you going?” he said, feeling stupid even as he asked the question.

Navani paused at the door to look over her shoulder. 

“Out,” she said. 

The door slammed shut behind her.

*

Inside her room, Jasnah trembled. 

Her hands clutched the fabric of her nightdress, wishing for something thicker, heavier, to hide behind. She was huddled in the corner of her room, pressed between her bed and the wall, both too cold and too solid, and her frightened gaze glued to something on the opposite wall. Though there was no light in her room but the wan slats of moon, an incongruous shadow covered the full breadth of it.

The monster on the wall had taken the shape of an undulating shadow, a man-like creature with long, austere robes. It had no face. Instead, a thin line of smoke trailed from between its shoulders, then blossomed into a hideous mass of lines, a symbol of scratchy, blotted ink like the sort she left in notebooks when her thoughts came too fast for her hands. 

Since she was very young, it had come to her, infrequent night visits, just after Navani blew out the candle and slipped out the door. The first time she shrieked and covered her eyes, both her parents and a score of servants had rushed to her room, expecting an assassin or kidnapper. What they found instead was the princess of Alethkar, sweat-slicked and teary-eyed, pointing at the empty wall and babbling something about a Beast with no face.

At first, her words were interpreted as the result of nightmares, as some unfortunate children were prone to have, and Navani brought Jasnah to sleep in her rooms on the worst nights. But as the problem persisted, years after it was expected to, people began to whisper. No one with such a mind as hers could be wholly impervious to the hardships. The Almighty created a world of symmetry, and if one had a surplus of talent in one place, they were sure to fall short in others. 

Worse was when physicians began to call her delusional and ill of mind. Perhaps it was not that she spoke lies but that she saw things that no one else did. 

As such, they instructed Navani to keep Jasnah’s time outdoors limited, and always supervised. Her hobbies were to be limited to reading, writing and the such, nothing strenuous. People were to speak to her in soft tones and never argue with her unnecessarily. Undo stress would only aggravate her condition and prolong her recovery. If recovery was even a possibility.

Jasnah did everything as instructed. A plague on her mind was a plague on her being, and the sooner it left her, the sooner she could be a person again. The only problem was, her treatment seemed to be failing.

The walls of her room were driving her mad, white-washed and bland and utterly the same. Reading the same books over and over, poetry and horrible fiction of the sort girls her age were supposed to find interesting. She was no longer allowed to the gardens to dirty her knees on the ground searching for odd cremlings. She could not climb the steps of the parapets to better examine the flight patterns of skyeels and flying things. She could not _talk_ to people, and without her work, she could not even talk to herself. The isolation was driving her mad. 

Worse, the shadows on her wall had not left. With no other people around to frighten it away, the thing had grown comfortable keeping her company all through the night and sometimes through the day.

She had grown accustomed to fear, but this was the first time it had tried speaking to her.

“You are a lie,” it said in a voice like humming bees. It sounded contemplative, somehow. “I like lies.” 

Jasnah’s only response was to clutch her dress tighter. 

“So strong, yet so fragile,” it said. “A mask of ice to hide the softness of your heart. To the world, you care for nothing but truth, yet beneath it all you are a cowering child.” It buzzed.“ A most fascinating lie.” 

Jasnah did not respond, but her breath caught. The shadow had rippled, just a little shiver. It had never done that before. 

Then it changed.

It began as a blurring of the surface, intricate shapes smudging together like melted ice. Oddly, this transformation happened on only one side of its patterned face, half remaining as static lines of ink, the other trembling like the taut string of a bow. The shadow warped and expanded to a black mass near double its size. The odd half became bulbous, twisting and trembling like something pushed at it from the inside, fuzzy contours thrown into relief at the strain. 

Jasnah stifled a scream. The fear that had never quite left her came rushing back, up and through her veins like wildfire with _heat_ . The Scholar in her, the part that threw questions and answers alike at her mother, strained to understand, to label, to _know_ , but fear lodged between the cogs of her mind, consuming and massive, curling her limbs into a ball and drawing her hands over her head.

There was a sound like ripping fabric and then a new voice said, "Strong like stone, I had thought, as well. _Too_ strong, even, but here you are, the very opposite. You are a child still!" He — for the smoothly cultured voice was undeniably masculine in a way the symbol-head’s was not — sounded almost excited about this.

“You.” A familiar buzzing, unhappy somehow. “Why are you here?”

“For the same purpose as you.” 

That was...odd. 

Was the shadow talking to itself? That seemed strange, even within the admittedly broad parameters of delusion. Curiosity warred with fear, but in the end their feud resulted in the same victor as always. 

Jasnah looked up and found the scene on her wall was quite a different one than it had been before.

There were two shadows. The first was the familiar symbol-headed figure, but the second was alien. Though the sheen of his skin was like spilled ink and his face shone an oily black, he seemed much more man than his fellow. There was something about the way he stood, tall and imposing, that reminded her of her father when he sat on his throne. 

The shadow with the noble voice now turned on his companion. He pulled a sword from the space above his head and raised it in an offensive stance, the blade gleaming with reflected light. “You must leave now,” he said.

The symbol-head hummed unhappily. “Mmm. Why?”

“You are too much for her,” the noble shadow said. “A Nahel bond must not be founded on fear.” 

“But —”

“You must leave.” 

“Mmm…I will leave.” 

The symbol-head faded to nothing. 

Now alone, the noble shadow sheathed his sword with an air of satisfaction and turned to face her. Jasnah shrank beneath his gaze. One being gone did nothing to alleviate her fear. 

He stepped from the wall and onto the floor beside it. 

Jasnah’s eyes widened with horror. But that… How was that possible? A shadow, and then two, and then one again, but then it stepped off the wall and became a man…? Her head ached from the implications. The room was spinning faster than her thoughts, her breaths coming short and sharp. 

“You are afraid?” the shadow asked, and his voice held just the slightest edge of scorn. “It is a mockery of the past. A human humble enough to be afraid. And of a spren! The very creation of which you humans are responsible.” 

Jasnah scrambled backwards into the space between the bed and the wall, trembling. “You’re a monster,” she whispered and felt foolish even as she said it. 

There were no such things as monsters, even if her mind devised ones of such detail she could not tell them from reality. 

The shadow, who had been moving ever closer to her, cornering her, paused mid-step. "Oh, dear," it said. "Perhaps I was in error. Perhaps fear is not and _madness_ is?"

At mention of _that word_ , her mind went artfully numb. She pushed her face into her knees and drew her arms over her head. 

_I am not. I’m not! Am I…?_

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" Her voice was very small and very young. For once she sounded her age, an anomaly that none but wood, stone, and the madness of her mind would bear witness to. 

When a moment of quiet passed, no sound but her muffled breaths, warming the flesh of her knees, Jasnah found herself wishing the thing had gone away, but a moment later, his voice broke both her hopes and the silence. 

"Perhaps I have used too much force,” he said, his voice softer, contemplative. “Your weakness is not a thing _all_ good, after all. Look up, Jasnah. Please."

His tone soothed her, she noted from a place far above the chaos of her emotions. Her muscles relaxed, her breaths deepened, and the weight on her chest lessened. Funny how the body responded so readily, even to the very thing it was frightened of. 

These musings came as vague afterthoughts noted by a Logic that seemed removed from the rest of her, and a stronger Jasnah would've turned her head away just to prove that she could. As it were, she did as he asked. 

When she lifted her head and met his fathomless gaze, she realized how little of him she'd taken stock of. Immediately, she scanned his features, eyes running over his form quick and sure. A man made of blackness, sharp and striking, wearing a tailored suit and pants that tapered off into the deeper blackness pooling at his feet. His left hand rested on the pommel of his sword and his right over his heart, his head inclined just a bit. It took her a moment to realize he was bowing to her. 

"I give you my apologies," he said. His words were strange, clipped, and his speaking pattern formed oddly. It was not that she couldn’t understand him, just that he used the oddest sentences to get his meaning across. "It has been many centuries since last I spoke with humans. I was... My spite _was_ .” He sounded almost embarrassed at this. "But now I have seen _you_ . You _are_ , Jasnah!"

She stared at him. The way he said it was not a proclamation of her identity but rather of her existence. Not that she was Jasnah, just that she _was_.

Some of the excited energy left his body; he seemed to come back to himself. "Your fear still is?" He seemed unsure.

That made Jasnah feel better. She leaned forward on her knees and eyed him. He stood about six feet in the air, the same height as her Uncle, as it were, and with the same poise. Jasnah noted, dimly, that her scrutiny was returning to her, and so her fear must be lessening. The man made of darkness was not moving towards her as he had before. Indeed, he shifted uncertainly where he stood. It was as if he could not handle a silence he did not make, and with the way he almost _squirmed_ Jasnah couldn't help but smile. Just a thin ghost of one anyway. 

"What are you?" she asked. 

"A piece of a god."

"Gods don't exist," she said automatically, though she was not sure why she felt the need to prove her intricacies to this... Well, he'd answer the question in a moment 

"What you say _is_. Gods are not as humans say. But I am not that. I am spren."

Jasnah narrowed her eyes. "Spren? Like the creatures that gather to feast on emotion?" It brought to mind the gooey, purple gobs of a fearspren, round and silly, nothing that could inspire the terror she’d felt before. "You're not _that_." Her pride simply wouldn't allow it.

"I _am_ ,” he insisted. "Inkspren. A higher spren than those you know. When the Radiants were, I was."

Jasnah almost curled her lip and told him that Vorin myth was a lie, but then she realized that the creature she told this to was something of myth himself.

 _That, or I'm crazy_.

No. Her mind was the one thing she could count on. Without it, she was no better than Ialai, content in her ignorance, tailing after men twice her age. She’d spent enough time calling herself damaged, and it had done nothing but hurt her. In fact, looking back, she couldn’t believe how much time she’d spent believing that about herself. The first thing Navani had taught her about critical thinking was that when one possibility proved impossible, she must look to the alternative. In this case, that happened to be her sanity, no matter how impossible that seemed. 

Jasnah turned back to the shadow, who was looking at her with a mixture of chagrin and determination. She decided to stop questioning what he was, for he seemed quite certain, and ask instead _who_ he was.

"What's your name?"

He hesitated before saying, "Ivory."

Jasnah sniffed and wiped her face with the back of a hand. "You waited too long. What's your real name?"

"The past is not. Ivory _is_." 

When she prodded him further, he stood firm with this point, refusing both to explain his words and his hesitation.

“Fine, then,” Jasnah said, growing exasperated. Storms, the spren was more stubborn than her mother! “At least tell me why you chose the name. It seems odd” — she gestured to the inky black of his body — “calling yourself Ivory.”

He squared his shoulders as if he was about to make some very important revelation. “It is because I am not ivory that I am Ivory.”

She looked at him.

He seemed distressed at her lack of comprehension. “Ink is what they expect of me, ink and scholarship, so I choose Ivory to show that ink is not all I am. I am different from them. My difference _is_.”

“Who is they?”

“The inkspren.”

Jasnah straightened abruptly. “There are others?”

“Of course. Once, we were many, but then —” He halted, face going stricken. 

“What.”

“It is not important. 

Jasnah pressed him, but he went oddly mute after that, words becoming clipped. He became increasingly distressed with each question, so she let it go. 

Over the years, she would come to know him better: a determined sort, yet anxious of his peers. Shy in company but vibrant in matters of scholarship. Soft-spoken, succinct and to the point. She would come to know him as a friend, a partner.

A bondmate.

**Author's Note:**

> note that this was posted in one go, impatiently and without proofreading. i apologize for roughness


End file.
